Fighting Mindflayers

[thecarrotdude]

What is the best strategy when fighting mind flayers? I'm the sewers under the temple district and I can't kill the mind flayers in the second room in the mind flayer lair there.

[Firestormalpha]

If you can summon Skeleton Warriors and Haste them, it's unbelievably effective. Mindflayers kill primarily by draining intelligence. Undead are immune, but IIRC only the skeleton warriors pack enough punch to take them out.

Or a improved hasted tank buffed with intelligence boosting potions.

[SixOfSpades]

Intelligence won't help you if you're vulnerable to their Psionic Blasts. Any character who has been Held or Stunned has no AC: any attacks made against that character automatically hit, the game doesn't even bother rolling the die to determine it. The enemies in the game are smart enough to know this, and if they see a Held or Stunned party member, they will usually ignore all other distractions and focus their attacks on the helpless guy. (The same is not true, oddly enough, of characters who are Unconscious: They only take an AC penalty, and enemies usually ignore them to fight those who are actually a threat.)

So, in brief:
Stun = Death.
Psionic Blast = Stun.
Save vs. Spells (though it might be vs. Death) = not Stun.
Save vs. Spells + decent INT + decent combat abilities = Win.

I tend to use lots of traps to take out Mind Flayers. Afterwards, I'd use one or two tanks with spell protections against stun and put them in the front while the rest of my party used ranged weapons to eliminate the Mind Flayers.

If you like "cheese", then use the Staff of the Magi to get rid of them.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Actually, Skeleton Warriors do suffer from Int-drain, IIRC. It's just that since they're immune to psionics and have decent AC compared to the Mindflayers' crappy THAC0, they rarely get hit fast enough to die from negative stats.

For a more unbalanced fight in your favour, use hasted Mordenkainen's Swords. Now these babies are really immune to Int-drain AND psionics.

Mantles and its ilk will also greatly assist in making your tanks immune to the Int-drain, as immunity to the physical attack means immunity to the secondary effects as well.

If you either have Jaheira or Clerics, and they're capable of casting Lvl-05 spells, use Chaotic Commands to render an unit immune to psionics.

Cheers.

[thecarrotdude]

Thanks for the input. What I ended up doing, however, is luring them out one by one and killing them off.

[Froberg]

There ways around it.
Items that give psionics immunity, using a lot of fireballs, summon deva's.. if you use item upgrade there's the psionics sword as well..

[Neo the Warrior Cat]

The last time I played through, I didn't fight these guys until after I went through the Underdark.

Why?

Kua-toa bolts. They can't int drain ANYTHING when they're stunned. (I also found that an Assassin PC makes quick work of them. Their saves vs death are truly pitiful, it's only the magic resistance that keeps you from blasting them with death spells :< )